All Tangled Up
by The Red Celt
Summary: Shepard goes to a bar for a few stiff drinks when a familiar old mercenary shows up. He discovers that she has a long-kept secret-shes a virgin. Zaeed then makes it his mission to divest her of her cherry in the most spectacular way possible. :) Rated M for a reason, fill for the k-meme.


She sat at the darkened bar, the recessed lights just dim enough to take the edge off the sharp corners and make the whiskey burn that much sweeter. It was a lesser-known place, one of those dives that goes totally unnoticed by most people except a few who look at the flickering neon sign and wonder what it's like inside before going about their day, forgetting it almost immediately.

A place for not being noticed, for forgetting, was exactly what she needed right now.

Cerberus had its claws in deep, that was for damned sure. They'd given her one hell of a gilded cage along with the illusion of freedom, but there was still the matter of the XO she didn't trust (although she'd unofficially put Garrus in that position, mostly because he was a capable leader who'd had her back for years but partially because she wanted to see if she could piss off Miranda hard enough to make that flawless forehead of hers wrinkle), the check-ins with he of the creepy synthetic eyes, and the fact that said creep had just thrown them into a firefight without all the necessary intel. He'd known what he was doing, too, and had nearly gotten them all killed.

She was sick of the impotent rage that lay coiled like a cannon fuse in her ribcage, so she'd gone to the seediest, dirtiest bar on Omega to drink herself stupid. She'd come across this place, The Blue Varren according to the grimy sign out front, and set up camp and a tab.

It was in that cheerless place that Zaeed found her, surprised that she would know about this bar, let alone actually drink here. It was a favorite haunt of his for years; people knew how to mind their own damned business here, and he wondered if she'd come for just that reason. He considered leaving her to it, but he didn't much relish the idea of following a woman into battle who looked, for all intents and purposes, to be attempting to crawl into a bottle and live there. Having made up his mind, he sidled over to the barstool next to her and swung his leg over, motioning to the turian bartender for a shot of whatever she was drinking. She glanced over at him and sighed, shaking her head.

"Figures that of all the people on the ship, you'd be the one to show up," she muttered into her shot glass before tossing it back.

"This's been my bar longer than you've been a soldier, girl," he countered. "Besides, you looked like you could use the company."

He was fishing, but he was also right, she had to admit. The frustration and anger throbbed like a rotten tooth in her gut and the whiskey was only putting a dent in it. "I've already got Kelly trying to get into my head, thank you."

"Your head isn't all she's trying to get into, if you catch my drift." Shepard's lips cracked in a grin and she huffed in agreement. "I'm not gonna make you lay on a couch and tell me your feelings, if that's what you're worried about. It's just that I've seen what stress does to people in command, and if you don't do something about it soon, you could get someone killed."

"Wow, you really don't mince words, do you?"

"Don't have time for it. Suspect you don't, either." She looked at him out of the corner of her eye and signaled for another shot.

"So what do you suggest, then? A vacation? A massage?" She rolled the shot glass in her hands and stared into the amber liquid as though the secrets of the universe were written in its molecules, if only she could see them.

"Those might work, but I think what you really need is just a good old fashioned fuck."

She leaned back on the stool and laughed at his blunt reply, then turned to face him head-on. Her face was flushed and pink and her smile made her look years younger. It looked good on her, and he realized just how seldom such an expression graced her face.

"If that was an option, I might go for it," she said, leaning one elbow on the bar, her heel propped up on the metal rail that ran along the floor.

"Why not? There's plenty of willing men—or women, if that's your thing. Shouldn't take long for you to find someone."

"That's just . . . not possible right now." Her face turned a deeper shade of pink at that.

"You've got fingers, haven't you? Use them."

Her eyebrows shot up and she spun back around to face the rows of bottles on the mirrored back wall. "Jesus Christ, Massani, how is what happens in my pants any of your business? And how did we wind up having this conversation?" she asked, more to herself than him. She motioned for two shots, and a beer to go with them as an afterthought.

"Because you're wound up so tight you're likely to explode," he said. "It's the same advice I'd give anyone—have a good fight, or a good fuck. Since we've been doing nothing but fighting for the past few days, I went with the latter." He was starting to get a decent buzz now, and wondered how drunk she was. She had a head start on him, but she hardly acted like it at all aside from a little limpness in her limbs as she reached for the pint glass, considered it for a moment, and took three deep gulps all at once.

"Since you decided to venture into the land of too much information," she began, flushing an alarming shade of red, "I haven't had an orgasm in years. It takes me too damn long and is never worth the work I put into it, so I just . . . don't."

"Hang on a minute, how long has it been?"

She bit her lip and rolled her eyes up to the ceiling in equal parts exasperation and embarrassment. "Can we not talk about this right now?"

"Yeah, all right." She tried not to notice his sideways grin or the fact that he kept eyeing her in the mirror. "Seriously, though, how long's it been, Shepard?"

"Son of a bitch." She mumbled into her beer, "Eleven years."

Zaeed stared openly at her at that, studying her face to see if she was lying. "You're having me on."

"No, I'm really not." She sighed and hunched her shoulders wondering again just how in the hell they'd gotten on this subject. "I have a ridiculously hard time getting there on my own, and I've never been with—" she said, biting off the sentence before the alcohol in her system could finish it. Leave it to the chattiest merc in the goddamn galaxy to fill in the blanks, though.

"You don't mean to tell me that the illustrious Commander-Fucking-Shepard is a _virgin_ do you?"

She plonked her head down on the bar and groaned. "You just had to say it." Her eyes met his through her hair, green and defiant. "See, that's why I don't bring it up."

"What? Why?"

"Because of that look on your face, like there's something wrong with me."

Zaeed didn't think that was the look he wore, but her current inebriated self-consciousness saw something less than flattering. "There's nothing wrong with you, it's just that I'm having one hell of a hard time believing that you of all people couldn't find anyone to have a one night stand with in all this time."

"Well, let's see." She started counting off on her fingers. "I was way too busy in high school being shunted around from foster home to foster home to get through an entire year in the same city, let alone have a boyfriend. Then I enlisted, and I was too busy in the academy for relationships, and the Alliance has really strict fraternization rules. Then I went off to beat the snot out of Saren and his geth hordes, and while there were some who wouldn't have minded, I didn't want to muddy the waters. Then I died for two years, and now I'm saving the galaxy. Again. Add to that the fact that I'm not the cute, flirty type and I have a tendency to shoot anyone who gets too handsy and . . . well, you get the idea."

He chuckled. "Yeah, I'm getting the picture. Well, it's no wonder you're stressed." He picked up his shot and paused with it halfway to his lips. "I could help you out, you know."

"What do you mean?"

"Don't be coy, Shepard." He put a hand over hers and scooted a little closer; although he stayed outside her personal bubble, she thought she could feel his breath on her over-sensitized skin when he spoke next. "I want to take you to bed, and you need someone who knows what he's doing."

She tried to laugh it off, but his proximity coupled with the whiskey currently fogging up her head was making the muscles low in her belly flutter. His hand was slowly sliding up her arm, and that did nothing at all for her concentration. "I . . . uh . . ." _Yeah, that's real smooth, Shep_, she thought with a grimace.

"I promise I'll be gentle," he said, his voice low and gravelly and surprisingly sexy. He leaned a little closer and put an arm around her waist, pulling her against him. Had it been any other time, or if she'd been a little less drunk, she'd have made up some excuse and bolted out of both anxiety and sheer habit. The temptation was strong for the first time in so long, and the way he was looking at her was waking up parts of her that she'd thought long-dormant.

"I don't think I've ever seen you be gentle with anything." Some part of her was still trying to argue against it, although the rest of her was on board with throwing caution to the wind and just going with it for a change. God knew it had been long enough, and there were worse people to spend the night with.

"What about Jessie?" he asked, pulling out his credit chit to hand to the bartender. "I've always been nice to my girls, Shepard."

"You haven't fucked your gun, though." Although he was awfully affectionate when he talked about that rifle . . . "Right?"

"Stop stalling." He helped her down off the stool and lowered his hand to the small of her back, guiding her out of the bar. She put up no resistance and a part of her was appalled at how easy she'd made it for him, but the rest of her wanted to see if he was really as good as he seemed to think he was.

She put her arm around him as they made their way back to the Normandy and traced the hard muscles in his side and up to his shoulders, but he moved away a bit when they got to the docks. Well, at least one of them was sober enough to be concerned with keeping up the image of propriety, she thought. There was no one else in the CIC, though—even Joker had left his precious ship to head to Afterlife. They stepped into the elevator and as soon as the doors were shut and she'd pushed the button that would take them to her cabin, he turned to her and took her hand, drawing her close. His mismatched eyes were on her lips and she gave an involuntary shiver of anticipation.

"Fancy a kiss from a grumpy old bastard?"

"Oh, you're such a sweet talker," she said, the waver in her voice ruining the joking tone she was going for. He leaned in closer and her eyelids slid shut as his mouth met hers, lightly at first and then with a more certain pressure. His tongue ran across her lips, coaxing them open and getting his first taste of her—a deep, unexplainably sensual taste that lay just underneath the remnants of the whiskey she'd been drinking. He was slow and very thorough, a preview of coming attractions, and Shepard didn't even hear it when the elevator doors slid open on her floor. The rough warmth of his hands trailed down her arms and around her waist, squeezing lightly.

"Come on," he said, bringing her out of the moment just long enough to lead her over the threshold and get the door shut between them and the rest of the world. In the dim hush of her room, the reality of what they were about to do chased away some of the drunken haze she'd worked so hard for and for a moment she wondered if she should just call it all off. There were a dozen reasons not to do this—they were crewmates and fraternization was almost always a really bad idea; she had only a practical knowledge of what the act itself involved (though she had seen porn before and had been privy to a lot of locker room talk), and—

And all that went right out the window when Zaeed ran his fingers across her cheek and into her hair to bring her in for another kiss. His technique bespoke years of practice and his knowledge of what a woman liked and how she liked it, and it was so far removed from the way she usually perceived him. She melted into it and lost herself in the taste of him, matching the rhythm he kept, feeling his hands on her body and the strength that lay in his tattooed arms.

So absorbed was she that she totally forgot what to do with her hands until he took one of them and put it on his chest, then dragged it down over the front of his armor to the clasps that held it in place. Taking the hint, she started undoing his chest plates while he tugged her shirt up and over her head. He shrugged off the metal plating and set it aside, then took off his gauntlets, greaves, and boots, which left him standing in a tank top and black pants. He stood still, waiting and watching her as she tentatively touched him, his skin hot after being encased in armor all day. Her hands slid up his stomach to his chest, then as she was tracing the patterns of his tattoos he leaned in and kissed the edge of her jaw. She felt him move her bra strap off her shoulder and follow it with his mouth, setting her skin afire with longing.

"This all right so far?" he asked, muffled slightly by her skin, and she shivered. She'd been less clothed than this in front of plenty of people—being a Marine meant giving up on body shyness for the most part—but the way he touched her, like he was hungry for her and wanted more than she knew how to give made her feel more exposed than she ever had before. The fact that he seemed to know his way around her body almost better than she did wasn't helping, either. It wasn't until he'd spoken that she realized she'd stopped moving altogether, frozen between wanting to dive in with both feet, or stop before things could go any further. She wanted him, but the prospect of being with him was an intimidating one, even now that they'd gotten this far.

Zaeed looked at her, searching her face as though it would reveal what she was thinking about, and she tried not to squirm under his scrutiny. "If you don't want to do this, that's all right. I won't force you."

"It's not that, I just—" She sighed and let her head thump back against the wall. "I don't know what's wrong with me."

"Nothing's wrong with you." He gently stroked her neck and brushed her collar bone with his thumb. "You've spent your whole career building up a stone wall between you and everyone else. Only natural that it's hard to tear down long enough to enjoy yourself."

"That's . . . surprisingly observant."

"I've been around a lot, Shepard. You're not the only person to have trouble letting go. Been guilty of it myself, in fact," he added in a low murmur that made her skin break out in goosebumps. "How about this—just lean back, relax, and let me drive. Think you can do that?"

"I . . . don't know." She wanted this, _really_ wanted this, but she was afraid that all her old hang-ups would come back to bite her. Zaeed had her go lay down on the bed and he stripped off his shirt, revealing his well-muscled body. The skin around his midsection was starting to soften and wrinkle a bit, one of the few signs of his age, and Shepard reached out to touch it as he joined her. He let her hands roam his body, then gently moved them to her sides.

"Let me drive, remember?" He kissed her, a deep kiss that made her head spin, then opened her pants and tugged them down, bringing her panties with them. She wriggled a bit to help him work them down her hips and when he gazed down her body, bare except for her bra, she fought the urge to cover herself. Her brain started to supply her with all the things that were wrong with her—her scars were extensive (and glowing), she was harder and more muscular than most other women her age, and oh god had she shaved recently?

Zaeed seemed not to notice any of that, though, and parted her legs wide enough for him to kneel between them. Her knees trembled as she did, still anxious about being so exposed in front of him, and he stroked her thighs until she relaxed. At his direction, she unhooked her bra so he could slip it off her shoulders, then mounded up one of her breasts in his hand and stroked circles around the nipple until it pebbled under his touch. Shepard's eyes slid shut, her lips parted, and her skin flushed with heat.

This was infinitely better than doing it herself; so often when she was alone she tried to figure out why other women claimed that having their nipples teased felt so good and had been left baffled and disappointed. There was something about being touched by someone else that had the muscles low in her body fluttering and jumping in anticipation. Or maybe it was just Zaeed; he may have been a battle-hardened mercenary, but with her he was all deft, tender caresses as he explored her body and Shepard wished he would venture lower to alleviate the ache that was building between her legs.

"How does that feel?" he asked, low and gravelly. "What does it feel like when I touch you here?" He ran his fingers down her side, just firmly enough that it didn't tickle, to her hip and then down to her inner thigh.

"Good, really good," she said, her voice quavering. She tried to think of something else to say, some way of expressing just how wonderful it felt, but she'd always been terrible at dirty-talk. To be turned on at all was a revelation in itself—to find herself turning into a big puddle of _want_ was a goddamn miracle.

Roughened fingers skated along the faint tracery of veins in her thighs and up, with agonizing slowness, to the edges of her sex. She opened her eyes to see him looking down at her, watching her reactions with heavy-lidded eyes. The front of his pants bulged with his erection, and she wanted to see it, touch it, see what sorts of reactions she could get from him. To know that she'd been the one to make him hard, and that he really did want this as much as she did, gave her a little confidence boost and allowed the walls she'd built to begin to crumble.

He caught her staring and looked down at himself, then back up at her face, which was reddening considerably. "Curious, are you?"

"Maybe."

"Well, far be it for me to deny a beautiful woman what she wants." Shepard's eyes went wide at the compliment, but Zaeed didn't notice. He was too busy stripping his pants off, hooking his thumbs under the waistband and working them off his hips, carved granite muscles shifting as he moved. He came back to the bed and lay beside her, his fingers slipping behind her head and into her hair as he kissed her, massaging her tongue with his own. She let her hands wander of their own volition, down the silhouette of his body to the jutting member between his legs and, once she'd taken a moment to trace the topography, gave him a light squeeze. He groaned into her mouth and his breathing kicked up a notch, puffing faster across her cheeks.

"Is that okay?" she asked. Christ, when had she turned into such a tentative little mouse? She was so nervously excited that her heart felt like a caged bird beating against her ribs, and the way Zaeed was responding to her touches only fueled the fire.

"You're doing fine, love. Here, like this—" He took her hand and showed her how he liked it, and before long he felt a knot of hot desire pool in his lower belly. He wanted to be inside her, and soon, but this had been a long time coming for her and he was determined to see her undone first. It was the gentlemanly thing to do, after all.

He rolled onto his back and brought her with him, hauling her on top of him, then pulled on her knees to get her moving. She wasn't sure what it was he wanted her to do, but let him guide her up until she was straddling his face, her feet under his shoulders and her knees on either side of his head. _Well, this is new_, she thought. This wasn't the position she'd had in mind, but she thought she could roll with it just the same.

Zaeed gazed at her body stretching up over him, her reddened face and her dark red hair hanging over her forehead, and at the part of her just above him that was already wet and flushed. He nipped at her inner thighs, relishing the way her muscles jumped, and gripped her waist to keep her from jerking around too much. All at once, he licked her hard from stem to stern and the moan that fell from her lips had his cock tapping against his lower belly in time with his pulse. God, she was the vocal type. This was turning out to be the best night he'd had in ages.

He pulled her down a bit so he could properly bury his face in her sweet cunt, sucking at the folds and probing her depths with his tongue before moving up to concentrate on her clit. Shepard grabbed his forearms and threw her head back as her body was wracked with a wave of heat that radiated outward from her core. This was . . . she didn't have the words. It was too much and not enough, roughened tenderness, a building tsunami of sensation that she could feel looming just beyond the edges of thought. One of the hands at her waist left and slipped down to join his mouth and she barely had time to think _Oh god, is he really gonna-_ before he plunged a finger into her and crooked it in a 'come hither' gesture. Her hips bucked and she had to fight to keep still and not grind herself into his face. Dear _Christ_. She knew the guy had a mouth on him, but she'd never dreamed it could feel this amazing.

Shepard was having a hard time staying upright and had to brace herself against the wall with one hand while the other was fisted against her mouth. Zaeed kneaded her ass and got her hips rocking in tiny movements to let her work out the tension there, and worked at her with lips and tongue and hands, so large against her slender frame. Unintelligible sounds, long moaning vowels, and half-words that wouldn't form right tumbled one after the other from her mouth. She was barely aware of what she was saying, if anything—his name, words of encouragement, the engine specs for the Normandy. All she cared about was the ever-building wave of need that was growing closer, beginning to crest now. Closer than ever, he added another finger to the first and the pressure between her legs cranked up to eleven, nearly uncomfortable but still pleasurable enough to make her cry out. Her forehead creased in concentration and sweat beaded on her skin, flowing in slow rivulets between her shoulder blades.

Zaeed, for his part, had never been with a woman who responded as well as Shepard did. She was so sensitive to every move, and each new sensation was accompanied by a different sound. Long, slow licks earned him equally low moans. Quick flicks got him high, breathy gasps. A twitch of his fingers had her hips shuddering and her thighs jumping, and when he finally started to concentrate on her bud, sucking on it and rubbing circles all around it with his tongue, she sounded like a penitent at confession. It was bloody gorgeous.

Her fingers laced with his, clenching and releasing, and he could feel her walls tightening on his fingers as he worked her to climax. "Za—Zaeed, I'm so—it feels—ohmygodohmygod, please just—oh yes, right _there_-" Her breathing was erratic, hitching in and out of her in uneven bursts, and suddenly she went still and taut, every muscle tensed as the wave crested for minutes, hours, eons, then broke over her with a thunderous crash. She nearly collapsed under the assault, the long-denied orgasm ripping through her and bringing forth a litany of curses and praises, pleas and high moans that were almost sobs in the sheer force of her release. It had been so long, such a long time, and now she was making up for it in spades.

He licked her slowly, pulling the aftershocks out of her, and kept her upright with a firm grip on her hips. Once the last of the spasms had finished, he helped her lift her knee over him so she could collapse, breathless, on the bed. Her eyes were closed when he kissed her again, and she could taste herself on his mouth. She took his face in her hands and licked his lips, luxuriating in the flavor, and he knelt between her legs with a groan. It was then that she remembered he hadn't finished yet and, despite the mind-blowing orgasm she'd just had, she was still a virgin. Well, for the next minute or so, anyway.

"Good, eh?" he asked, totally unnecessarily, and Shepard smiled against his mouth.

"I think that qualifies as 'fucking incredible', Massani." Her fingers went tripping down his body again to encircle his throbbing cock, and he instinctively thrust into her hands with a low, rumbling grunt. "I want you so bad," she whispered, and now that most of her uncertainty had gone along with the majority of her brain cells when she came, Zaeed found that he was even more turned on by this more sultry version of Shepard.

"Right then. Brace yourself, love." He put a hand over hers and, between the two of them, got him angled where he needed to be. She wrapped her arms around his neck and nodded at him, her ankles locked behind his back. He slid into her slowly, pushing past the tightness inside her until she clenched her teeth and let her breath out in a hiss. "You okay?"

"Fine, it just stings a little."

"Do you need to stop for a minute?" he asked, reluctant as he was to leave the wet warmth of her body.

"No!" she exclaimed and he chuckled at her vehemence. "No," she said, a little more calmly this time, "just give me a second to adjust." She glanced up at him and stuttered, "Uh, if what I hear is true, there might be . . . a little blood involved right about now."

"Considering I spend most of my time covered in the blood of some species or other, I don't think that'll be a problem." He distracted her from the pain, which was rapidly fading, by leaving a line of kisses along her neck to her shoulder and back again. Shepard was mesmerized by the way the muscles in his jaw worked and the thin tendrils of black ink that bloomed at his neck, then coasted down his arm in swirls and chevrons. She stroked his cheek and ran her fingers through his close-cropped hair, and when he sucked at her earlobe she let out a whimper that made his cock twitch inside her. The pain was gone now, replaced by heat and the need to feel him moving within her, so she rolled her hips against him and in the next instant he thrust into her to the hilt with a growl that had her shivering.

This was what she'd been waiting for, this indescribable feeling of being full, of being as close as humanly possible to someone else, of _connection_. Ever since waking up on that lab table in a Cerberus facility, she'd felt like she'd been drifting through life with nothing to tether herself to. Now, here was her anchor, and she'd found it in the unlikeliest of places—with a scarred-up soldier who was old enough to have fought in the First Contact War. It was enough to make her head spin with the rather unexpected turn her life had taken over the last few hours.

Zaeed had to concentrate harder than usual to keep himself under control so he didn't come off as some young buck with no experience to speak of—he'd promised her someone who knew what he was doing, after all. A guy who knew what he was doing did _not_ come within the first five minutes, in Zaeed's humble opinion. Not that Shepard would know one way or the other, but this was the time she would gauge her future sexual exploits by, and he fully intended to be more than just a notch on her bedpost. He wanted her to come back to him again and again because no one else could make her come like he could. She was so tight and so goddamn _noisy_, though, and the way her brow furrowed and her mouth fell open when he slammed home was enough to make any man's knees weak.

"Think you've got another one in you, darlin'?" He saw the answer on her face, like she was about to disappoint him or something, and he shook his head. "S'all right." He groaned as a spike of heat shot through his body and said, "I'm gettin' close. Fuck, you feel so _good_."

Although she wasn't anywhere near another orgasm again so soon after the first, she was enjoying the hell out of herself. She was sweaty and breathing hard like she'd just gone ten rounds with a geth prime, and Zaeed thrust between her legs with the rhythmic slaps of flesh on flesh. His hands were absolutely _everywhere_, like he was trying to touch every inch of her at once. He pulled her knee up over his hip and dragged his palm along her body to her hair, where he brushed a few sweat-dampened locks out of her face. So full and swimming in pleasure, Shepard felt drunk on the myriad sensations that assaulted her from every angle. She wanted to feel him come apart between her legs, wanted to see his face when he lost control, and she clenched her legs tighter around his waist. He bowed his back and dropped his head to his chest as the orgasm began to coil its way through his aching cock and he scrunched his eyes closed, drowning in her.

"Can—oh, _fuck_-can I come inside you?" he rasped. She nodded, but he said, "Say it, I want to hear you."

"Come inside me, Zaeed." He gave a loud moan and collapsed onto his elbows, his mouth against hers as he panted through the last of his energy reserves. He really got off on the sound of her voice, so she decided to try it out on him, hoping like hell she didn't sound stupid in the process. "I want you to come in me . . . fuck me harder, I need you to fuck me—"

The sound he made was more akin to a desperate whine, and Shepard was amazed that he was even capable of such a thing. He lost his rhythm entirely a moment later and with a hitching gasp, his fingers digging into her scalp and making fists in her hair, his world exploded. He ground his hips into her and she could feel him pumping into her, his thick cock emptying deep inside her, and he buried his face in her neck to muffle his moans. She wrapped her arms and legs around him and turned her head to kiss him, tasting salt on his skin. Another round of shudders coursed through him, and then he went still, breathing hard, his muscles burning in that good way that meant he'd be achy and satisfied later.

He pulled out of her and rolled over onto his back, rubbing his face and giving an exaggerated groan. She put an arm around his middle, and he stroked her skin in lazy circles. "I don't know about you, but I could really go for a smoke right about now."

Shepard laughed softly. "Not much for pillow-talk, are you?"

"Did you expect me to be?" He looked down at her, and she propped her chin on his chest. "You're one hell of a woman, Shepard." She couldn't think of anything smooth to say to that, so she just pulled herself up and kissed him. "Mmm, do that again." She did, with more enthusiasm, and he made a low rumble of contentment against her lips.

"I don't have a lot of basis for comparison," she began, "but that was pretty fucking spectacular."

"Careful, you're starting to sound like me." After lying with her through the afterglow (and for a little while after) he gently extricated himself from her arms and sat up, searching for his clothes. She pulled the blankets up around her waist and watched with a small smile curling at the corners of her mouth. When he was dressed and armored up again, he leaned down to place a kiss on her forehead. "So, do you, ah . . . wanna do this again sometime?"

"Definitely. I'll clear my schedule." He gave a minute quirk of his mouth, and Shepard realized she'd just seen Zaeed Massani smile.

He headed to the door and said, without turning around, "Get some sleep. You're gonna need it for tomorrow night."

"Your place or mine?"

"Not sure yet. Plans to make, and all that. Talk more later, Shepard." Then the doors swished closed and he was gone.


End file.
